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Press Release - Los Angeles Marathon - 3/19/11

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

            Elite wheelers hopeful of fast times on Sunday
           Three prior L.A. champions forecast Sunday's race

LOS ANGELES, March 19, 2011 – Three prior wheelchair winners of the Honda 
LA Marathon presented by K-Swiss are looking forward to substantial 
challenges during Sunday's race, both from the competition and from the 
weather.

"It is a great honor to compete with and against Saul Mendoza and Krige 
Schabort," noted 2009 champion Aaron Gordian of Mexico, speaking through an 
interpreter, at a morning news conference at Dodger Stadium. "I am 
prepared.

"I know it is a very challenging course. They have some hills and pretty 
steep downhills and it's very dangerous. In Mexico, I prepared very well 
for going up hills and chasing after cars to prepare myself. Here in L.A. 
particularly, there is a great challenge and I look forward to coming in 
first and meeting the great, challenging course."

For two-time defending women's champion Amanda McGrory, the race will be as 
much about technique as strategy. "For me it is a challenge both uphill and 
downhill," she said. "It's obviously much harder to push up a steep hill 
than it is to walk or run up a steep hill, but for coasting downhills, you 
have an automatic advantage the heavier you are and I am not a big person.

"On any steep hill, I am at an automatic disadvantage because a lot of the 
other women, anyone who is heavier than I am, is coasting five, six, 10 
miles faster than I am. Once you get up to a certain speed your arms simply 
can't move that fast any more and you have to let gravity do the work. When 
you add rain, especially climbing the hills – we push with friction, it's 
rubber-on-rubber friction, from our gloves to our wheels – you get the rain 
in there and get water between the rubber, you start slipping around and 
you turn into a bloody mess at the end of it."

Shirley Reilly, who won the 2006 Los Angeles race, said that "The beginning 
of the race is always challenging because it starts uphill and every uphill 
starts with a downhill. We don't get much rest. There are a lot of short, 
steep uphills. I consider towards the end – the last six miles – is where 
we're flying. Our body gets a little break from climbing all the hills. The 
beginning and middle is really challenging."

Like so many wheelchair racers, Gordian is taking strength from a difficult 
ride he had, in specific the 2000 edition of the Los Angeles race. "It 
rained very hard, and unfortunately I wasn't able to finish the race.

"I ended up in Hollywood with two flat tires and was freezing cold, so I 
decided to go into a café. I remember I was sweating and dripping wet, and 
I turned around and see a medical team behind me and they came to me and 
start taking my vital signs. They took me to the hospital in an ambulance.

"And I said,'wait a minute, what's happening?' I told them to wait one 
minute; I wanted to take my coffee, I'm cold. I had the beginnings of 
hypothermia so after 2-3 hours in the hospital, I was released. The feeling 
that I had was not that I got hypothermia, but I wasn't able to finish the 
race because of the two flat tires, and that I couldn't finish my coffee," 
drawing a laugh from those at the news conference.

But he added, "Once again, I'm here and I want to accept the challenge of 
racing in the rain. I don't what my time will be or if I'll place in the 
money, but I'm here to accept the challenge. I want to confront it and 
finish this race tomorrow."

                                 ###

 

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